10 Times Abdul El-Sayed Was Absolutely Wacked Out
On Monday, the Detroit Free Press endorsed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed for Michigan’s open Senate seat with the justification that it is...
On Monday, the Detroit Free Press endorsed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed for Michigan’s open Senate seat with the justification that it is his opponent, Mike Rogers, who is the real extremist.
“Everything you’ve heard about Michigan’s U.S. Senate race is true: An extremist is asking voters to send him to Washington, masking an agenda far out of step with Michigan’s mainstream under the pretense of normalcy. If elected, this man would urge America down a dark path, changing the shape of our nation, perhaps irrevocably,” said the Detroit Free Press. “But that man is not Abdul El-Sayed.”
Of course, anyone — left or right — who examines El-Sayed’s record cannot help but come to the conclusion that this is a man who is wildly to the left of mainstream American politics. (RELATED: Abdul El-Sayed Rewrites the Meaning of ‘Democrat’ in Michigan )
As for Mike Rogers, the Free Press’s attack on the former Army officer and FBI agent amounts to going after his pro-life position, which the newspaper characterized as a willingness to “deprive Michiganders of essential rights.”
El-Sayed is so off-the-charts extreme that it is difficult to grasp the full extent of it. This is the man who is the political protégé of antisemitic extraordinaire Linda Sarsour, formerly of the Women’s March. Sarsour, in a comment characteristic of her usual drivel, once said women couldn’t be true feminists if they supported Israel’s right to exist. According to Just the News, Sarsour had an essential role in raising El-Sayed’s political profile when he ran against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2018. (RELATED: The Electoral Integrity Issue Isn’t Israel — It’s Islam)
Even El-Sayed’s familial and work connections, though not reflecting directly on him, suggest he comes from a milieu that despises America and Israel. His half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, has been charged with committing aggravated battery at an anti-ICE protest. Additionally, Mariam Muhammed Odeh, who worked for his Senate campaign, has been charged with conspiring to threaten University of Michigan officials and law enforcement officers as part of her anti-Israel activism.
El-Sayed has also chosen time and again to associate himself with (and even campaign with) Hasan Piker, who famously said America deserved 9/11 — a comment which El-Sayed refused to condemn. Earlier this month, Piker also said he believes “America conducts more terrorism in the world than al-Qaeda.” (RELATED: Hasan Piker and the Democrats Who Embrace His Violent Rhetoric)
The Detroit Free Press, which asserts that calling El-Sayed “dangerous” is “a descriptor laden with racist subtext,” would likely say it is racist to note the milieu to which El-Sayed belongs. It is nevertheless a warning sign that accompanies a long record of extreme, wacked-out comments. I’ll present just 10 of those comments that show the Detroit Free Press’ idiocy in endorsing him.
1. “I believe we need to defund the police.”
In the craze that followed the death of George Floyd, El-Sayed happily jumped on the bandwagon of defunding the police.
“I believe we need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,” he said, “and investing more in the means of educating and empowering, engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty.”
El-Sayed went on to delete a bunch of old tweets supporting the defund the police movement.
He then lied to the Detroit News about his clear record of actively supporting the defund the police movement, saying, “I actually never, never called for defunding.”
The nonpartisan local media source Bridge Michigan noted, “[T]here is ample evidence of El-Sayed’s past support for defunding the police.”
2. “[D]ecarceration generally is really, really critical.”
Abdul El-Sayed didn’t just call for defunding the police. He has also called for letting a bunch of criminals go free, almost to the extent of ideologically opposing prisons.
At a 2020 panel session, El-Sayed argued broadly for “decarceration.”
“But I would also say that decarceration generally is really, really critical here,” he said. “There are so many ways that society has failed to deal with real problems and has used policing and jails as a stopgap for all of these failures. ”
El-Sayed went so far as to portray getting people out of prison as the goal in itself.
“But any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in, particularly right now,” he said.
3. “I just don’t want to comment on Khamenei at all.”
After El-Sayed was caught on tape by the Washington Free Beacon saying that “a lot of people in Dearborn” were sad about the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and that he therefore planned to stay silent on the matter, he refused to condemn the late leader of the Iranian regime when asked to do so by a University of Michigan student.
“I just don’t want to comment on Khamenei at all,” he said. “Like, I don’t think it’s worth even touching that.”
The student went on to explain that his cousin was “hunted in the streets of Iran by the IRGC” because she wasn’t wearing her hijab the way the regime wanted and that his uncle was sentenced to death by the regime.
El-Sayed was obstinate in his refusal to condemn Khamenei. When the student asked him: “I want to ask if you regret that silence. I want to ask if you renounce the people that held vigils, that supported this terrorist for all the stuff that he’s done. I want to ask if you stand unequivocally against the IRGC, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, that has killed 50,000 protesters,” El Sayed’s only response was to say that he believes America has “turned ourselves into the world’s policemen.”
4. “I’m voting #UNCOMMITTED in the February 27th Michigan Democratic presidential primary.”
El-Sayed joined the Uncommitted National Movement, sponsored by Arab Americans for Progress, which refused to vote for President Joe Biden in the 2024 Democratic primary because of Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas following the Oct. 7 massacre.
“[T]he U.S. continues to be the largest supplier of weapons and military funding to Israel and innocent Palestininans (sic) continue to be massacred by a military escalation that has taken over 30,000 lives since October,” the organization said on its website.
He was so committed to the proposition that Hamas should be let off scot-free that he refused to lend his support to his party’s president. And, of course, El-Sayed has repeatedly referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocide.”
5. “[T]here’s something rotten at the heart of the sport.”
Michiganders care about football. But El-Sayed evidently does not.
In 2021, El-Sayed said, “[T]he toxic masculinity at the heart of America’s most popular sport — and men’s sports culture more generally — is way deeper than a few emails or a Jay-Z turnaround.”
He doubled down a few years later on his anti-football crusade. In a 2023 podcast, he questioned whether football could be “ethical” or “safe.”
“What is it about this brutal sport that keeps us coming back?” he said. “Is there a version of football that’s actually ethical and safe? What would need to change?”
El-Sayed claimed that, though he loves football and played it in high school, “there’s something rotten at the heart of the sport.”
6. “[L]ocking down communities with major outbreaks”
When the COVID pandemic hit, El-Sayed wanted health bureaucrats to take authoritarian control over the whole country.
In March 2020, he was ahead of the curve in demanding a total shutdown. Moreover, he wanted to lock down certain communities that had strong viral spread.
“Taking on the epidemic of coronavirus will require bold action to mitigate spread — this means eliminating congregation in restaurants, bars and clubs, as well as potentially locking down communities with major outbreaks,” he wrote in the Guardian.
El-Sayed went on to call for a “parallel Covid-19-specific health system under the control of the national guard.” Later, he used the pandemic to call for the implementation of Medicare for all.
7. “Under my leadership our state will not expend a dime of state taxpayer resources enforcing federal immigration policy.”
While El-Sayed was running for governor of Michigan, he called for a total rejection of any and all federal immigration laws.
“Under my leadership,” he said, “our state will not expend a dime of state taxpayer resources enforcing federal immigration policy that at best, is incoherent and at worst is heartless.”
He specified that neither Michigan’s state police nor the Department of Corrections would participate in enforcing federal law on the matter.
His reason for doing so? “Because every time we watch these deportations you are talking about a family that has been torn apart and you are talking about a portion of our economy that has been shipped out and I am not willing to be a part of that.”
El-Sayed went on to argue that he would make sure that illegal immigrants would be treated the same as American citizens.
“Beyond that,” he said, “we have also got to make sure that in this state we are not discriminating by documentation status.”
8. “[A]n abortion … is necessary in so many circumstances.”
This is the evilest perspective El-Sayed subscribes to: sometimes, certain children just need to be killed.
During a 2018 interview, El-Sayed said that abortion is in many cases “necessary.”
“It’s ridiculous to me that folks want to shut down an institution like Planned Parenthood whose primary goal is to prevent unwanted pregnancies and ultimately prevent an outcome like an abortion which is not something that anybody ever celebrates, but it is necessary in so many circumstances,” he said.
He did not clarify exactly when he thinks it is “necessary” to kill an unborn baby, but presumably he means it is “necessary” when a child has a disability he deems distasteful.
9. He questioned how a Jewish state is “consistent with any form of liberal values that we say we believe in here in the United States.”
In a June 2026 interview, El-Sayed was asked if he opposes Israel’s right to exist. His response was essentially: not really.
“I do not,” he said, “I just dispute the idea that you should have an ethnostate.”
And in May, El-Sayed explained that he “struggle[s]” with the question “Do you believe in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state?”
He said this “forces the question of a definition of what a Jewish state means … and how that is consistent with any form of liberal values that we say we believe in here in the United States.”
10. “I guess she’s pregnant, so something is happening.”
In a podcast episode this spring, El-Sayed decided to personally attack and mock Second Lady Usha Vance, who was eight months pregnant at the time, and obsess over her children’s race.
“What do you think is going through Usha’s head when [JD Vance] talks?” asked El-Sayed. “She’s like, ‘Damn, I have to sleep with him.’”
“I guess she’s pregnant so something is happening,” he said. “Can you imagine, he’s got Brown kids, at some point he’s going to have a really awkward conversation with his kids, like, you made your career hating people who are different.”
“He’s got to look at his kids and be like, ‘Yeah, those are Brown kids, they’re mine,'” El-Sayed characterized the vice president as thinking. “‘You know what I mean? And I had Brown kids. I had Brown kids?’”
Usha Vance, he said, should “get out” of her marriage.
Based on all of this insanity, I’m sure I’m missing a lot more. But sadly, it looks like El-Sayed is going to take all of this to the Capitol, as he is currently leading in his Senate race by 3.3 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
